A client's choices are not one switch. Marketing, equity reports and a message about their own file are three different things, and stopping one never silently stops another. Knowing the difference is what stops you from reading a quiet inbox as a broken automation, and reading a bounce as a preference.
The Three Kinds of Message a Client Receives
Every email Pulse sends carries a class. Transactional is a message about a client's own live file, a document you are chasing, a reminder about their closing date, a follow-up on the application they started. It carries no unsubscribe link, because it is not commercial. Marketing is anything they did not ask for, a rate-drop note, a newsletter, a birthday message. Equity reports are the recurring report on a property they own. Texts sit outside all three: SMS consent is one plain on or off switch, never split into categories the way email is.
What an Unsubscribe Link Stops
Every commercial email carries a link to the client's own preference page. From there they can stop equity reports on one property, stop equity reports everywhere, stop marketing everywhere, or stop every commercial email at once. Each choice only covers what it names. Stopping equity reports leaves marketing running, and stopping marketing leaves their equity report arriving on schedule.
What It Deliberately Does Not Stop
None of these choices reach a transactional message. A client who unsubscribes from every commercial email you send still hears from you about their own mortgage: a missing document, a rate hold, a closing date. That message is about the file they asked you to work, not something you chose to send them, so it is not covered by a marketing or reporting preference and never will be.
Muting Reports on One Property Only
When a client owns more than one property you track, the report link can offer a narrower choice: stop the report on this address without touching another. It is a property-level mute, not an address-wide preference, so a second property you hold for the same client keeps reporting normally.
A Bounce or Complaint Stops Everything
A hard bounce, a spam complaint or a manual block is a different kind of fact. It is not a preference the client set, it is what your sending record shows, and it silences every class at once, transactional included. That is deliberate: nothing you send should keep landing somewhere it is failing or somewhere it was reported. Read Your Automation History shows a suppressed send with its reason attached, so you can tell a delivery problem from a client's own choice at a glance.
What to Do Next
- Skip a Client From an Automation to stop reaching one person by hand, whatever their preferences say.
- Schedule Recurring Equity Reports to see where the per-property mute shows up.
- Read Your Automation History to check whether a message actually landed.